


Queen Arya Stark, The First of Her Name

by LyaStark



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Queen Arya, Queen in the North
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-24
Updated: 2014-10-24
Packaged: 2018-02-22 10:33:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2504684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyaStark/pseuds/LyaStark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arya never asked for a crown, but when called to lead and rebuild the North, she does not falter in her duty to her pack of thousands.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queen Arya Stark, The First of Her Name

Arya never yearned for a crown nor to sit upon the high seat of her father. That was for Robb or Bran. But they were gone now. Her family, her pack had been slain and skinned until only she and Jon remained. Now, he held what was once the Wall while she gathered together the shattered pieces of the North.

It wasn’t easy rebuilding the remnants of her homeland and attempting to bring stability to her people. Arya had much to learn of governing. But her time in Braavos had made an adept pupil of her and she learned quickly.

Lord Wyman Manderly was her greatest supporter and instructor. He had brought much of the North to her cause when she returned from the Wall looking like Lyanna Stark reborn with Nymeria padding at her side.

As Hand of the Queen, Wyman guided her in maneuvering the treacherous world of politics by shaping the skills she already had. The waif had schooled her in lying and detecting lies in turn. The Black Pearl had taught her to smile and laugh and say just the right words, all the while concealing her true intent. The monsters she suffered in the Riverlands had given her a thorough education in how much cruelty the smallfolk could suffer from the decisions of the highborn.

Those lessons served her well as she met with lords and ladies of the North while attempting to gain their fealty, and in forming alliances with the other new kingdoms of Westeros. Arya took on a role to suit each vassal or monarch. With Lady Maege and the Greatjon, she was fierce and bold. With Willas Tyrell, she was a gentle and refined. Edmure Tully found in her a niece eager to learn from his superior wisdom.

In the end, Arya managed to begin her reign with more friends than enemies. With the arrival of spring and the hope of new harvests, the state of the North offered little but promise.

By Arya’s seven-and-tenth year, her advisors' hints and suggestions that she take a consort had become more insistent.

“The North must have an heir,” Wyman said, when they were alone after a council meeting.

“I will give the North an heir,” she replied. “But my children will be named Stark.”

“Good, good,” he said, leaning back in his seat and patting his expansive belly absently. “We will cite the need to keep the House name alive if any raise question.

“I’m already married,” Arya said. “The Mormont ladies wed bears. It won’t be so surprising that I married my sigil too. We’ll announce that the she-wolf has taken a wolf as her husband.”

Wyman attempt to dissuade her, but she held firm. With her reign only a few years old, any southron prince or lordling would be regarded with mistrust and disdain by her people, while choosing one amongst the northmen could fuel anger among the rivalries and petty disputes already forming. And all of them would attempt to push her aside and rule in her name.

Though there were whispers and rumors of discontent at her decision, the kingdom was growing in prosperity and Arya continued to be well loved amongst the people.

When her first babe came, every soul in Winterfell knew the girl’s father to be the master armorer who had reforged Ice and presented Arya with her brother’s bronze and iron crown. Soon enough, the rest of the North had heard the rumors as well.

Any concern at Eddara’s father being a nameless bastard ebbed away as she grew older and became well known to the nobles and smallfolk alike. Arya had her and the rest of her children about her when she went on progresses around the kingdom so they might see and be seen by the people they were charged with protecting. Like her, they were known and loved. For they weren’t only Gendry’s, they were the only grandchildren of the honorable Lord Eddard Stark and the heirs of Arya Stark, the Queen Who Healed the North.

With each of her children, Arya found herself repeating the lessons she had heard her father give Robb and Jon.

“If you would take a man’s life, you owe it to him to look him in the face and hear his last words,” she told Benjen before allowing him to accompany her to the execution for the first time with his older sisters.

“You need Brandon as much as he needs you,” she said to Catelyn after she and her brother got into a particularly nasty row. “We’re wolves and all of the members of the pack have to rely on and protect each other. These petty squabbles won’t mean a thing when winter comes, and it always comes.”

“A queen needs to eat with the men and women who follow her if she hopes to keep them,” Arya told Eddara. “Know the people who follow you and let them know you. Don’t ask them to die for a stranger.”

It made her heartsick every time she remembered they would never know their grandparents or hear their wisdom directly from them. So she didn’t let herself think on it often. When she couldn’t help it, Gendry helped sooth away her pain.

In the beginning, Arya had been uncertain how to act with Gendry. They weren’t the children they had been when they first knew each other, and it felt wrong to play a part with him, as she had learned to do with other men. In that uncertainty, Gendry helped her find the security to be something of her real self, instead of always hiding within a role.

In turn, she helped him share his own pain and fears.

“Least you had a mother and father to learn from,” he said one night as she rested her head on her broad chest. “You know what you’re about with the children. I never had no father. I don’t know how to be one, neither.”

“Oh, shut up, don’t say that.” She swatted his chest, remembering how he told Ben he’d better not be telling his sisters they couldn’t do something because they were girls, or he’d give him a clout on the ear. “You know what you’re about, my love.”

In truth, she would always wonder if she knew what she was about, not just with her children, but with the kingdom as a whole. She worried for every one of them and prayed her choices would never lead them to any of the misery she had seen first hand.

They were her pack now. Not just Gendry, Jon, and the children. All of them. The fishermen along the coasts, the farmers who tilled the harsh northern soil, the people of the Mountain Clans who still called her “the Ned’s little girl,” the nobles great and small. All of them. They had all become her pack now. And she would protect them. 


End file.
